According to the reports on critical raw materials for the EU, a raw material is considered critical if it has a high economic importance to the EU combined with high supply risk. Supply risk is considered to arise from a combination of several factors, namely a high concentration of production in countries with poor governance, limited material substitutability, and poor end-of-life recycling rates. A number of industry activities, policy initiatives and research projects have recently been initiated in Europe with the aim to secure an adequate supply of raw materials.
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As the technologies we use as a society have advanced, so have the materials used in these technologies. Some of these materials are exotic and highly specialized, making them particularly vulnerable to supply disruptions and supply disruptions particularly impactful. Such materials are designated as “critical” materials. Their level of criticality can be identified by accounting for a number of factors related to their supply risk and the extent to which a supply disruption would impact business operations or society at large.
Over the past decade, raw material price spikes have called attention to the supply security of a variety of critical materials, including rhenium, rare earth elements, and helium. While market forces play an important role in creating and resolving these situations, transitions in technology also create step-changes in demand that increase or decrease the criticality of different materials. With an appropriate understanding of how materials are used in various applications, it is possible to explore the critical materials implications associated with the introduction of new technologies.
Material and product life cycles are based on complex value chains of technology-specific elements. Resource strategy aspects of essential and strategic raw materials have a direct impact on applications of new functionalized materials or the development of novel products. Thus, an urgent challenge of modern materials science is to obtain information about the supply risk and environmental aspects of resource utilization, especially at an early stage of basic research.
This article observes how the criticality of raw materials is perceived and handled within Materials Science, contributing to goals 9 and 12
An effective response to climate change demands rapid replacement of fossil carbon energy sources. This must occur concurrently with an ongoing rise in total global energy consumption. While many modelled scenarios have been published claiming to show that a 100% renewable electricity system is achievable, there is no empirical or historical evidence that demonstrates that such systems are in fact feasible. Of the studies published to date, 24 have forecast regional, national or global energy requirements at sufficient detail to be considered potentially credible.
Energy is central to the survival and prosperity of human society, which explains the social sciences' interest in energy production, consumption and distribution. The emergence of the global environmental agenda in the second half of the 20th century gave rise to a distinctive research literature on how energy systems and global environmental protection are interconnected. The threat of disruptive climate change, in particular, has thrown the spotlight on the central role that energy plays in shaping the future relationship between human society and its natural environment.
The paper investigates the construction of strategies aiming to up-scale low-carbon innovations from pilot to full commercial scale. This requires a systemic understanding of the evolution of the technology along with the organizations and infrastructures supporting its development. Technological innovation systems concepts operationalize system building processes, including the establishment of constituent elements and the performance of key innovation activities.
The concern regarding alternate sources of energy is mounting day-by-day due to the effect of pollution that is damaging the environment. Algae are a diverse group of aquatic organisms have an efficiency and ability in mitigating carbon dioxide emissions and produce oil with a high productivity which has a lot of potential applications in producing biofuel, otherwise known as the third-generation biofuel.
The efficiency and power output of a PV module decrease at the peak of sunlight due to energy loss as heat energyand this reduces the module power output. Multi-concept cooling technique, a concept that involves three types of passive cooling, namely conductive cooling, air passive cooling and water passive cooling has the potential to tackle this challenge.